


this planet has a name, you know

by triplestar



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Blood, Character Death, Gen, Probably Not Ever, Will I Ever Write A Fic Where No One Dies: No
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-15 21:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5800012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triplestar/pseuds/triplestar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere in the icy forests of Starkiller Base, Kylo Ren meets his end. Finn wipes the blood from his hands, and asks himself if he did the right thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this planet has a name, you know

This is a good place to die, Finn thinks.

The trees that surround them will make fitting mourners with their dark wood and weeping limbs, and when the next snow falls, Kylo Ren will have a sheet of infinitesimal crystals for his funeral shroud. Maybe, if there's some last luck that finds him too late, the cold and biting winds will keep his body from rotting. Maybe it will block out the pain.

Ren's body shifts, and Finn nearly drops the lightsaber's bloodied hilt, fingers slipping on something that used to run through healthy veins. But this isn't the time for post-murder panic, and this is not a man who deserves pity. Perhaps if he tries not to care, he can pull off a miracle.

He draws his weapon with an electric hum, too scared to approach a dying man without a blade in hand — and he knows that Kylo Ren is dying, though the Stormtrooper in him thinks it impossible. He saw the blue light go in and come out the other side, he felt the blood splatter against Poe's leather jacket, and he heard Kylo Ren choke on his own last words.

" _Traitor,_ " Kylo Ren spits through a mouthful of blood. The snow beneath his body is beginning to stain, and Finn feels a pang of regret for not killing Ren faster. Dying in agony is an awful thing.

He raises his lightsaber with marked uncertainty. "Name-calling isn't gonna get you anywhere," he replies. Ren snarls, but his teeth are stained with blood, and his head falls back against the snow before he can bite.

Finn feels his hands shake, and wonders how Kylo Ren ever killed so easily.

He makes his approach slowly, carefully, watching Ren's hands for the telltale twitch of the Force's power, both hands clutching his weapon's hilt. He kicks the hilt of Ren's saber aside as he passes, lodging the saber in a snowbank far from Ren's reach. Logic and too many years under Kylo Ren's command tell him that distance from an object means nothing to a Force user, but he ignores both these things. It's the sense of security that matters, and the confidence it brings.

He needs confidence, now that his hands are shaking.

His gag reflex clicks in seconds after he comes close enough to see his own work. It's hard to see blood against the ash black of Kylo Ren's heavy robes, but the vast patches of soaked fabric reflect the glow of his lightsaber and the snow beneath is more red than white and oh god if he looks close enough at the hole he cut he can see the pallid bone—

Bile rises in his throat, and Finn drops his lightsaber, blue light retracting into the hilt and vanishing before it hits the fallen snow.

"You're dying," he says. He didn't mean to say it. He didn't mean to sound so shocked.

Kylo Ren has no response. His breaths come sharp and ragged, and it seems to Finn that they all might be his last. The snow continues to fall without remorse, melting into the deep crevasses of Kylo Ren's wounds, creating miniature rivers of water and blood.

Something rumbles in the distance, the sound deep and vast like ancient gods stirring. An orange glow appears on the horizon, and Finn knows that the Resistance has won. Soon, the Falcon will come to snatch them from the jaws of armageddon, and he will leave this planet a murderer.

He might have killed back at that distant castle, but it's different when you can see your victim's face.

"Leave," Kylo Ren snarls, the words jolting Finn from his shock-induced reverie. "You've already done enough." His split lip curls when Finn steps closer instead. "You _are_ disobedient."

"I'm proud to be."

For a moment, their eyes meet, and the part of Finn that still calls this man 'sir' is appalled at his own audacity. Kylo Ren's eyes burn with a fierceness that comes only when time is short, like he wants to unload all his pent-up hatred through nonverbal glares before his heart stops beating and his lungs go cold.

Then he strikes.

Finn barely sees the motion; Ren's gloved hand moves like a black viper, snapping forward to take hold of Finn's unguarded mind.

It HURTS.

Every Stormtrooper has heard the screams that come from Kylo Ren's torture chamber, trembled at the agonized howls and imagined the worst. Or maybe that was just him. Finn was always quick to fear. And as easily as he'd feared the horrors of Ren's torture, his nebulous concept of psychological trauma pales in comparison to the real thing.

He thinks he's screaming. It's hard to tell through the fire and brimstone and unfiltered _pain_ ripping through him, burning his lungs and salting the earth. He feels something snap — is it bone? Is it tissue? Is it his mind, finally breaking under the strain of Kylo Ren's presence?

Now he _knows_ that he's screaming.

His head is no longer his own. Through the Force's brutal grace, Kylo Ren reads him like a book, tearing out the pages as he goes and Finn _feels_ it, the memories and subconscious debris all ants under Ren's magnifying glass, twisting and scorching and —

Ren's hand drops, and Finn gasps with relief. He falls to his knees, limbs shaking, clutching his head like it might break from his shoulders if he's not careful.

"What _was_ that?" he asks in a voice with frayed edges, but Kylo Ren does not answer. His unfocused gaze cuts through Finn like a dull knife.

"We're monsters to you," he says at last, speaking with a quiet bitterness. "You must think that you've done something noble — slain the beast, is that it?" He exhales, long and slow, closing his eyes as his breath crystallizes. "Go on. Tell me that I deserved it."

There's so much _anger_ behind his words, so much rage and spite leaking from his lips like pus from an open wound. It burns Finn to meet Ren's stare, and all he can think is that this is the face of patricide.

Something cracks. The sound rolls in low and deep, sweeping through the snowy clearing like a gunshot's echo. Finn rips his gaze from Kylo Ren's, freezing in fear of the unknown. Mere feet away from him, Ren attempts to do the same despite his dying tremors.

The earth splits open, and together they learn true fear.

Finn doesn't hear a scream from Ren, but he doesn't need to. He grabs the other man and throws him over his shoulder while the ground beneath them falls apart, and he _runs_. The lightsaber he grabs without thinking, his mind still a haze of fading pain and adrenaline highs. Kylo Ren's blood is staining his (Poe's) jacket but the world is crumbling around him and the sky is on fire and a potential wardrobe malfunction is the last thing on his goddamn mind.

He runs and he runs hard, away from the apocalyptic sight of the planet collapsing, away from the clearing where Ren's blood stains the ground, towards Rey and the Falcon and the promise of safety. The weight at his back says nothing, and Finn can't tell if Ren's dead or merely unconscious. He pretends not to care.

A cold wind still bites his face even with fire on the horizon, snow sinking past his clothing and freezing his bones. There's no end to the trees and frost but he keeps moving, keeps pushing forward and hoping he'll make it.

"Not much further," he tells himself, "not much further, you can do this—"

Something catches his foot, and he hits the ground hard. Kylo Ren's body lands beside him with a sickening thud, and Finn's scrambling to his feet before the sound has faded.

"Oh no," he gasps, "oh no, oh no no no—" There's a faint squelching sound when he grabs Ren's shoulders to assess the damage, and he doesn't need to look at his hands to know they're wet with blood. Ren groans at the sudden pressure, and Finn lets out a muted sigh of relief. He adjusts his grip, preparing to pick Ren up and keep running, and—

Kylo Ren's eyes snap open. He seizes Finn's wrist, his hand a trembling vise, and parts his bloodied lips.

"You _killed me_ ," he rasps. "You put a saber through my chest, and now you want to _save_ me?" He laughs, the sound distorted by chapped lips and bloody lungs. "You have to _choose_ , Eight-Seven."

"You're delirious," Finn says, his voice a taught wire. "And I don't take orders from you anymore."

"ARE YOU GOING TO KILL ME OR NOT?"

He hesitates. In the distance, ancient trees turn to ash.

"No."

The venom seems to drain from Ren's fangs. He relinquishes his iron grip on Finn's arm, smearing blood on the cuff of Finn's (Poe's) jacket as his hand falls to his chest. There's something unnameable in Ren's dulled eyes, like defeat with savage edges.

Finn looks away. He does not want to pity a monster.

"So what will you do with me?" Ren asks, bitter to the last syllable. "Do you want to see me suffer before I go? I've already done that."

It would be easy to do that. All it would take is for him to turn and go, to leave Kylo Ren behind with a bleeding wound and an icy grave. It would hurt to die so slowly. It would be what Ren deserves.

"I'll take you back to the Falcon," Finn says, making his mind up as the words leave his mouth. "The general can do what she wants with you, assuming Rey doesn't kill you first."

Ren's lip curls. "You know I won't make it that long."

He's right. Finn knows it.

The blood in the snow and the hole in Ren's chest agree.

"Yeah," Finn concedes, "but I might as well try."

"I don't _want_ you to save me," Kylo Ren spits, blood bubbling at the edge of his mouth. "I'd rather die than owe _you_ my life."

"I don't want to save you either," Finn snaps, "but I'm not going to let you freeze to death on some nameless hunk of rock, or get blown up with it."

They stare each other down with angry eyes, Kylo Ren giving Finn a look between antipathy and begrudging disbelief. The forest is quiet, somehow, and the snowflakes nesting in Ren's hair make him look less of a monster and more like a night sky. He closes his eyes, and Finn sees the shadow of a family resemblance.

His gut twists as he imagines telling Leia what he did to her only son.

"It has a name," Ren tells him.

"Huh?"

"This planet. It has a name." Kylo Ren takes a long, rasping breath, and opens his eyes again. "I used to know what it was. My master told me, a long time ago." The black pits of his eyes seem duller than before, and his gaze is focused somewhere far beyond Finn's face. "I should have listened."

There are a thousand silent questions filling the space between them. They hang in the frozen air like wordless icicles, dripping daggers with cold intentions.

Finn can almost hear a voice like Ren's cry out 'TRAITOR.'

"Why'd you do it?" Finn finally asks him. "All of it." He doesn't mention the blade through Han's gut, the split second where time froze and all he could see was the awful truth. Homicide is not the elephant in the room, it is the paint that colors the walls, framing the conversation in tones of rotting blood.

Kylo Ren's face twists into some unnamed emotion. "I had to," he says. "There was no other way."

"That's bullshit."

"What do _you_ know?" Ren snarls, his ferocity dimmed by blood loss and delirium. "You betrayed the Order, do you really think that you understand duty?"

A rumble sounds in the distance. It's closer now, louder, stronger, and the forest itself is shaking in fear. There's no time for words, no time for argument, no time to notice that Kylo Ren spits up blood when Finn grabs him and seems paler by the second. All Finn can see is the trees collapsing around him and the ground giving way and the place up ahead where the woods grow thin and help will come.

He almost crashes head-on into Rey as the trees start thinning. Snow still clings to her clothes from when she fell, and Finn sees death in her eyes when she takes note of the man in Finn's arms.

"Is that—"

"I'll explain later," Finn tells her. "For now, we need to _run_."

He'd take her hand if he could, but Kylo Ren's body is a heavy weight, and she never did need that kind of small comfort.

Rey takes the lead, not bothering to look back as they make for the forest's edge. They stand on the face of a dying planet with mere minutes left before the world's end, and yet Finn feels somehow safer with her to follow.

The trees clear, and Finn feels hope like never before as the Falcon descends from the heavens, a guardian angel clad in cosmic filth. Its ramp is barely halfway lowered, but that doesn't stop Rey from leaping aboard, gesturing for Finn to do the same with a desperation born of cataclysm. Finn does so without a second thought.

He stumbles backwards when lands, and for a heartbeat all he can see his own own skull dashes to pieces on the rocks below, grotesque and bloody and oh god this can't be it—

Rey grabs his arm just as he's entered the five stages of grief, pulling him straight from denial into euphoric relief as she ushers him inside.

Their stomachs hit the floor as the ship rockets upward and then they are _safe_ , safe from the end of the world and the earth-shattering crash of the planet's death knell. Neither he nor Rey looks back at the place they helped to destroy. They already know what the viewports will show.

The Falcon's interior is the same as it's always been, its consistency a surreal contrast to the turbulence of the last few hours. Finn half expects to hear Han's voice from the cockpit as the ramp closes, before the memory of that undeserved death floods his mind, taking the knife and twisting it so far it aches. His body wants to go slack, but there is a dying man in his arms, and so he remains stoic as his own recollection lays waste to his mind.

"He's bleeding," Rey says, snapping him from an instant replay of Han Solo's death. She looks at Kylo Ren like she's examining an animal's carcass, suspicious and curious yet unwilling to come closer. "...Is he dead?"

Finn shakes his head. "Not yet. But he's heading that way fast."

He can hear the rhythmic sound of blood dripping on the Falcon's floor as he walks to the nearest bench, where he sets Kylo Ren down with no response from his wounded cargo. His hands are stained red when he pulls them away.

"Why did you bring him?" Rey asks, her harsh glare fixed on Ren's wounds.

Finn wipes his hands on the cloth of his pants with a hint of revulsion. "I don't know."

"You don't _know_? Aren't you the one that dragged him all this way?"

"I couldn't just leave him there!" Finn exclaims. "Maybe if I'd done my job right I wouldn't have had to bring him with me, but—" He pauses, breathes in, and continues, less panicked on his second try. "I know I should have left him behind. It sounds crazy but… I kind of felt bad for him."

Rey gives him a look of the kindest pity Finn's ever known.

Kylo Ren shifts behind them, and both of them are torn back to the matter at hand. When a man lies dying so close nearby, a certain respect is owed. If not to the future cadaver, then to the simple concept of a peaceful death.

The snow in Ren's hair has yet to melt. His breaths are slow and labored, and Finn's ears are filled with a roaring guilt, singing the undeniable with the voice of a choir.

 _You did this,_ it says.

Finn bites his lip and accepts his fate.

_I know._

Kylo Ren dies so slowly that neither Finn nor Rey can pinpoint the moment his heart ceases its beating. He moves from person to corpse without sound or word, and there are none who will mourn his passing.

Leia might, once they bring her the body. Finn's heart grows heavy at the thought of her pain.

"He's gone," Rey says, many minutes after Kylo Ren has passed on.

Finn gives a delayed nod. "Yeah."

"What should we do with the body?"

If it were up to Rey, Kylo Ren would find his final resting place somewhere in the inky void beyond the ship's doors. His body would drift endlessly between the stars, another meaningless piece of cosmic waste.

In space, nothing rots. Some future traveler could find his remains, and know exactly what it was that killed him.

Finn swallows the lump in his throat. "We should take him back to Leia. He's… he's still her son. He got what he deserved, but it should be her choice what happens next."

Rey takes a last glance at Kylo Ren, and puts aside her grudge to agree. "Alright. For now, we should clean up the ship. It'll be a while before we get home."

The last word makes Finn look up from the man that he killed. Rey is already off to find something to wipe up the red stains on the floor, and he knows that she hasn't noticed the weight of her words.

Home is a nice thought.

When they get home, he might finally be able to rest.

Miniscule drops of melted snow fall from Kylo Ren's hair and run down the Falcon's wall. Finn watches their slow progression with tired eyes, and waits for Rey to return.

**Author's Note:**

> well that sure was a thing anyway back to writing bullshit anime fanfiction


End file.
